Our Lady of the Rockies stands 90 feet tall
and in the likeness of Mary, Mother of Jesus,
sits atop the Continental Divide 8510 ft. above
sea level overlooking Butte, Montana. It is the
United States's largest Madonna and the
second largest statue. The statue was built
by volunteers using donated materials to honor
women everywhere, especially mothers.
The base is 8,510 feet above sea level and
3,500 feet above the town. The statue is lit and
visible at night. The design for the statue was
engineered by Laurien Eugene Riehl.
He was a retired engineer for the Anaconda
Company who donated his engineering
skills to the project.
Work on the project began December 29, 1979. Volunteers spent many summer evenings blasting a road to the top of the Rockies, sometimes making only 10 feet of progress a day. The base of the statue was poured in September 1985 with 400 tons of concrete. The concrete was provided by Pioneer Concrete Company, a long time family business in Butte, Montana. On December 17, 1985, a CH-54 Tarhe from the Army National Guard's 137th Aviation Company lifted the statue in four sections into place.
Two-hour roundtrip bus tours are available from June until September from the Our Lady of the Rockies shop at the Butte Plaza Mall. A tram consisting of handicapped accessible two 25-passenger cars is in the planning stages. As proposed, it would carry visitors over a mile-long vertical rise of 2,000 feet to the base of the statue in about 5 minutes.
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